My first sessions of #ASCH20: 
First up, Shannen Dee Williams, from Villanova, on black Catholic teenagers and the desegregation struggle after WWII #ASCH20
Williams: I'm attempting to confront the enduring myth about black Catholics in the US, that they weren't involved in the civil rights struggle. #ASCH20
Williams: In Chicago in 1940s, Mother M. Genevieve Crane was faced with problem of "colored girls as postulants." Didn't want to fill her order with black Catholics. Sisters didn't want African Americans in the novitiates #ASCH20
Williams: Exclusionary admission policies started in 1900s. There were 11 exceptions between 1900 and 44. All racially ambiguous cases where sisters could pass as white. #ASCH20
Williams: Exceptions had to suppress their racial identities and cut ties with black families. One exception to that was Sister M. Frances, one of the Marynoll Sisters. In 1914, refused to cut ties with family. #ASCH20
Williams: Vast majority, presented with the choice of passing, refused, many choosing to go into the black orders. #ASCH20
Williams: Exclusion of black people from religious orders was a hallmark of the Catholic Church, until the global allied powers defeat of the Nazis. Then came the Mercy Proposal, which called for an all-black province with all-black novitiate. Never came to fruition. #ASCH20
Williams: Sister M Martin de Porres Gray, who organized the National Black Sisters Conference in 68, said seeing picture of Emmett Till's body was turningpoint in her life. #ASCH20
Williams: Our understanding of black Catholic resistance to white supremacy remain grossly deficient. #ASCH20
Williams: The black orders were in the South. The sisters who desegregated orders were often the children of people who'd come north in the great migration and they were afraid of the South, didn't want to go back to the South #ASCH20
Williams: Many felt themselves energized and radicalized by the death of Emmett Till. Telling these stories is critical for understanding black Catholic participation in civil rights struggle. #ASCH20
Williams: This can expand our understanding of what black Catholic resistance to white supremacy looked like ... but also help us start to talk about what white supremacy looked like behind convent walls #ASCH20
Now, @jncthehistorian, recent doctorate from Temple, on black evangelical activism and the surprising uses of colorblind theology. #ASCH2020
@jncthehistorian Curtis: Theology that can be subversive, in one case, but reactionary in another. And reactionary theology can be subversive. That's basically all I want to show you today. #ASCH2020
@jncthehistorian Curtis: Howard Jones, the first black evangelist with the Billy Graham crusade, used color blind theology to undermine "sacred whiteness." But implications of theology were slippery. #ASCH2020
@jncthehistorian Curtis: Howard Jones believed there was something profoundly wrong with the fact racists found harbor in Bible-believing & preaching churches. Evangelicals haunted by the question "would you want your daughter marrying a negro?" #ASCH2020
@jncthehistorian Curtis: But Jones thought the New Testament broke down racial and cultural barriers. One in Christ! He thought upshot was clear: we shouldn't make differentiation of races in the church. Before the cross, we are one family #ASCH2020
@jncthehistorian Curtis: This is, of course, the argument you can hear today from colorblind conservatives. But in the 60s it was very upsetting to evangelicals. Billy Graham was often told Jones was not welcome, or would only be welcome if he didn't bring up his colorblind theology #ASCH2020
@jncthehistorian Curtis: The difference is in the ends to which the theology is aimed: supporting black Christians freedom struggle, or no? #ASCH2020
@jncthehistorian Curtis: When Billy Graham went to Montgomery, Jones asked to go. He emphasized his intentions were evangelical (not a civil rights project). Graham: situation is too tense. Not wise. #ASCH2020
@jncthehistorian Curtis: White supremacists had to be placated so the gospel could be preached. #ASCH2020
@jncthehistorian Curtis: Black evangelicals saw, and started to argue that you can refuse to see a man by insisting he is "a man, not a negro" as well as by seeing him as a "negro, not a man." #ASCH20
@jncthehistorian Curtis: White evangelicals increasingly argued that "we are *already* all one in Christ," so any talk about reality of race was wrong. #ASCH2020
@jncthehistorian Curtis: Jones critiques were appropriated. The argument here is that colorblind theology itself can be used in different ways, and scholars must attend to how it is being used. What liberates in one context is used to oppress in another. #ASCH2020
@jncthehistorian Ansley Quiros, from the University of North Alabama. Maybe we're talking about the failure of a revolution more than a revolution? #ASCH20
@jncthehistorian Quiros started by talking about when Karen Pence went back to work, teaching at a Christian school: huffpost.com/entry/karen-pe… #ASCH20
@jncthehistorian Quiros: The roots of these political struggles are in the theological struggles over race, and go to the civil rights era. The insistance that all are equal before God created a serious, if short lived, moral crisis in the moral politics of white evangelicals #ASCH20
@jncthehistorian Quiros: Our periodization of the history of the right obscures (among other things) the resilience of conservative evangelical arguments opposing racial equality. #ASCH20
@jncthehistorian Quiros: Story of resistance to integration into schools is not just mobs outside schools, throwing bricks and curses at black kids protected by Nat. Guard. Also--more important?--is whites abandoning public schools #ASCH20
@jncthehistorian Quiros: Consider Ga. Gov. Vandiver and the Sibley Commission, which considered whether to comply with fed. order to desegregate or end public education. #ASCH20
@jncthehistorian Quiros: Congress tried to sweeten the deal for segregation by adding $$ to school funding, and freedom of choice policies, which allowed parents to choose a school in the district. #ASCH20
@jncthehistorian Quiros: In Americus, Ga., some literally would rather see the school reduced to ashes than integrated. They set the school ablaze. #ASCH20
@jncthehistorian Quiros: White segregationists started to focus their efforts on establishing separate schools, "segregation academies." After integration, white citizens in Americas immediate got interested in private education. #ASCH20
@jncthehistorian Quiros: One school founded was called Southland. Southland. The people who named it were not subtle. #ASCH20
@jncthehistorian Quiros: The Engel SCOTUS case, about school prayer, needs to be understood in this contexts. It's a civil rights case, more closely related to Brown v. Board than Roe v. Wade. #ASCH20
@jncthehistorian Quiros: Ga. pol Eugene Talmadge (who hated the activist court and connected civil rights with Communism) said Engel decision put "God and the devil on equal plane" #ASCH20
@jncthehistorian Quiros: Current conflicts over private schools and Karen Pence's school are connected to religious liberty, but we should see how that's connected to civil rights struggle over segregated schools #ASCH20
@jncthehistorian Q&A. Quiros asks Curtis "are white people lying" about colorblind theology? How do we consider sincerity and apparently self deception of stories about how they are not racist?
@jncthehistorian /end thread.
